By: Riley Lumpkin and Gabe Mattick

Hurricane Harvey made landfall near the Texas Gulf coast late on August 25. In just 56 hours, Harvey grew from a regenerated tropical depression over the Gulf of Mexico into a Category 4 hurricane. According to weather.com, wind gusts reached 132 mph in Port Aransas and 125 mph near Copano Village. With the wind, also came massive amounts of rain; an area near Highlands, Texas reported an astounding 51.88 inches of rain!

Various airports in Hurricane Harvey’s path had to cancel or delay more than 12,000 flights, and according to the express.co.uk, Harvey has left 30,000 people homeless. With the staggering amounts of rain, wind, and flooding that occurred, many have lost homes, and some have even lost their lives. As of September 22, 2017, as reported by the Houston Chronicle, 75 people have lost their lives due to the storm. And as they continue to clean up the areas affected by the hurricane, the death toll could rise.

Amidst the chaos, millions have donated to organizations like the Red Cross to help the victims of this terrible storm.

Many people are donating to help the people in Houston, and one significant person is J.J. Watt. His fundraiser raised more than $37 million. J.J. Watt is not the only one donating, the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army have each donated $300,000.

With the excessive damage to over 200,000 homes, there is a lot of debris. According to CBS News, there is an estimated 8 cubic yards of debris, consisting of furniture, clothes, toys, drywall and other items, inside of the damaged houses. Cleaning up the streets of Houston will take months, especially since resources will be divided to help with the damages from hurricane Irma. The debris will go into the landfills. San Antonio and Houston help each other after disasters, and so some of the debris will go there.

Everyone is volunteering and helping out, even though Federal Emergency Management will cover about 90 percent of the costs. Houston is slowly but surely recovering from the traumatic hurricane.

For more information, please visit: https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/tropical-storm-harvey-forecast-texas-louisiana-arkansas

In 1964, The New York Times published Martin Gansberg’s now famous article “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” about the killing of Catherine Genovese. It claimed that thirty-eight people witnessed a murder (of a woman some of them knew) and did not intervene, giving lazy excuses for their lack of action afterward.

Later, the title was proven partially false in another New York Times article, but the story still led to the formulation of the bystander effect theory; a theory in psychology which, according to Psychology Today, posits that observers in emergency situations are less likely to intervene the more other observers there are around them, even observers who would be likely to intervene if they were alone. The phenomenon is prevalent and well-documented. It has even been discovered in the behavior of five-year-olds in a study published by the Association for Psychological Science. According to Psychology Today, Psychologists explain the bystander effect for many reasons, but namely that in emergency situations humans’ sense of personal responsibility is diffused when surrounded by other bystanders, and that humans model their behavior off of those around them, so if no one is intervening they are unlikely to.

The popular ABC primetime show What Would You Do? features many examples of the phenomenon, staging offensive acts in public and seeing how bystanders react. Often on the show, large groups of bystanders react late, or do not react at all.

Last week, Ms. Ostendorf’s English 9 Accelerated class read “38 Who Saw Murder…” and learned about the bystander effect. They watched the following video demonstrating and discussing the effect on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac

Below are excerpts from interviews of three students in Ms. Ostendorf’s class. They gave their opinions on “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…” and the bystander effect, commenting on where it manifests in their lives.

Jack Malek, 14

What was your initial reaction to reading “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…”?

I was really surprised to read that thirty-eight people saw a woman get killed that they knew and they did nothing about it, they did nothing to save her.

Do you think the bystander effect is a real phenomenon?

I do. This is happening right here and this story is a perfect example. Because people think when they see something, and there are a lot of people around that someone else is going to do something about it. So, this is a perfect example.

Did reading “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…” lead you to question yourself?

I questioned myself, “Have I ever been a part of the bystander effect? Have I ever done this? Have I ever been part of this phenomenon?”

Do you think you would have reacted in this situation surrounded by other bystanders? Would you now?

After reading this story, yes. But, I don’t know if I would have been part of the bystander effect before.

Otto Schmidt, 14

What was your initial reaction to reading “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…”?

I was somewhat shocked and surprised that the people didn’t help when needed, but after thinking about the story and realizing the circumstances of it being the nighttime and people not really wanting to help and thinking somebody else would, I wasn’t super surprised by the outcome.

Did reading “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…” lead you to question yourself?

It definitely made me think more about ignoring, not just when people are in need but ignoring a lot of things, or just doing things because everybody else is doing them even though maybe it’s not the right thing to do.

Before you learned about this, do you think you would have reacted the same way as the other 38 people if you were in that situation?

Probably.

How would you react now?

At the very least, it would lead me to think about what happened here. And then, to act.

Henry Aerts, 14

What was your initial reaction to reading “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…”?

Honestly kind of shocked but in a way I was also kind of not surprised. Because, I’ve seen people doing that where someone is in need but no one helps, they just walk by because they think that someone else will help them or they just don’t want to get involved. So, I’ve seen that kind of thing before.

How do you see the bystander effect in your personal life?

For example, when the teacher asks a question in class, a lot of times no one says anything because they think that someone else is going to answer it, but then in the end it just goes awkward and silent because no one can answer it, thinking that someone else would.

Did reading “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder…” lead you to question yourself?

Yeah, it kind of did. Because, I wasn’t sure if I would have done anything different. Maybe I would have called the police, I don’t know.

How would you react now?

If it happened tonight, I would definitely call.

Hopefully, with more knowledge about the bystander effect, people will begin to intervene more in emergency situations, even when surrounded by others.

Since it’s June, it seems to be a good time to write about Pride Month and its history!

June is Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community. June was chosen because it’s the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which began on the early morning of June 28th, 1969. The Stonewall Riots took place in New York, and are often considered the start of the modern gay rights movement. The Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia at the time, and was one of the only places to openly cater to the gay community, including its most marginalized members, such as transgender people, drag queens, butch lesbians, and homeless youth. Police attempted to raid the inn, and tensions went up when transgender women refused to go to the bathrooms with police officers to have their biological gender checked. A crowd gathered, drawn by the commotion, and were sparked into action when a woman resisted arrest, fighting with police officers.

There are two other very important anniversaries to the LGBTQ+ community that also take place in June. The first is the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting last summer, which was on June 12th. The shooting was a hate crime that killed 49 people attending a gay and lesbian club in Orlando, and was both the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter and the deadliest hate crime against LGBTQ+ people in US history.

On a substantially happier note, the final noteworthy date, June 26th, marks the anniversary of same-sex marriage legalization in the United States! The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples could indeed get married, a goal that the LGBTQ+ community had been working towards ever since the Stonewall Riots started the Pride movement. It just goes to show, even though we still have a long way to go, we’ve come very far since the days of Stonewall.

(Cool side note: If you Google any word related to Pride Month during June, such as ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual,’ Google will add rainbows to the search results.)

On the 22nd of May, a suicide bomber targeted the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, in Manchester England, in the second terrorist bombing the city has seen (The first being the 1996 IRA bombings). Of the 22,000 people at the concert, the bomb killed 23, including the 22 year old terrorist, and injured 116 more. Immediately afterwards, many tried to flee the arena, quickly leading to widespread panic across the city.

However, the immediate response from both citizens and emergency services was commendable. Concert goers where offered free rides, and lodging, over Twitter, or even just a place to charge phones so they could contact their parents. In particular, local Sikh communities and temples helped to respond; providing meals and safe places to stay.

Shortly after the bombing, police investigated a suspicious package near the arena. It turned out to be clothes, and was the last major cause for alarm that night. After the attack, the UK’s terror threat level was raised from Severe to Critical, though it has fallen back to Severe as of May 27th. As a further response, several members of the British Parliament proposed an automatic death penalty for suicide bombers.

The attacker was determined to be 22 year old Salman Abedi, a British Muslim of Libyan Descent. Well, at first, it was thought that Abedi had been supported (ISIS even claimed responsibility for the attack), but after a raid on his apartment, and further investigation, it was determined that he was largely acting alone. It is certainly possible that he sympathized with ISIS and their goals though.

Whatever the precise motives behind it, the bombing was a tragedy, and we hope it won’t be repeated.